Madeleine - Week 46

It's been another rough week in our house as I'm dealing with some surgery complications (allergic reaction and/or skin infection...think lots of itching) and Madeleine is teething up a storm. There are two pronounced bumps in her lower jaw that are showing a bit of white. This, along with lots of unexplained crying, exciting diapers (too much information?), and a baby with her hand constantly in her mouth, tells me that Miss M is not going to be a toothless wonder for too much longer.

Madeleine continues to be a rock star eater. We really only feed her "baby" food when we're having something she absolutely can't have; otherwise, she eats what we eat. She loves roasted red peppers and devoured her spaghetti and lamb bolognese sauce last night. Over the weekend, George introduced her to Vegemite (she liked it), and yesterday I gave her her first bit of chocolate, Whittaker's dark chocolate (she liked it). Any frustration in the messes she leaves behind is far outweighed by the happiness I derive from seeing her enjoy food. And she does enjoy it!

Miss M takes after her father as a climber. Over the weekend, she twice got herself onto the couch by putting her table up to it, climbing onto the table, and then climbing onto the couch. She is standing unassisted for longer and longer, up to about 20 seconds, but she always ends up seated as soon as she realizes what's going on. It's interesting to see how she is fearless in some ways and utterly cautious in others. Madeleine doesn't stay where she doesn't want to be for long because she is a speed crawler and avid puller upper.

Evidently, the language center in her brain is working at top speed because she has returned to signing within the last week or so. I much prefer a sign of "all done" to banging on the highchair tray, so this is very welcome! Madeleine will sometimes imitate things we say, like repeating two syllables of gibberish after "hello" or three after "banana." Again, really neat to see develop!

Enough talk...or did you skip to here? No judgment passed.

Here is this week's photo, showing a girl on the move and chewing on her hands:

I was lucky enough to catch George on his way out the door for photo assistance this morning. I thought you might like to see what it's like as I have the camera ready and George tries to keep Madeleine in one place for more than a second.

Even though I've been slacking in the blogging department, I promise that I've been crafting up a storm, averaging a project a day this week with two more slated for tomorrow. More posts are coming, so check back later this week.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Grand Canyon

...Or we went to Arizona and I came home without an appendix.

Here's a little much longer version of the story:

As much as possible (and when they want to), we try to meet up with our international friends when they're visiting elsewhere in the US. It's fun for us to see other parts of the States, to see our friends a bit more often, and to get to know their other friends.

Last Friday, we flew to Phoenix to meet up with some friends from overseas who were visiting Phoenix on their way east. Over the weekend, we had a beautiful time catching up with our friends, meeting and getting to know the friend who they were visiting in Phoenix, and exploring a bit of the area.

Desert Botanical Garden
This is the species I most tracked during my Earthwatch research in Costa Rica.

Desert Botanical Garden

At the Desert Botanical Garden's Butterfly Pavilion

Desert Botanical Garden

Madeleine enjoyed her first Vietnamese culinary experience.

Sunset

That was the happy part of the trip.

After I fed Madeleine in the wee hours of the morning on Monday, I didn't go back to sleep because I had this weird, dull but nagging pain. It was like a stomach ache and muscle pain put together...but clearly not either of them. By the time real morning arrived, I was exhausted and feeling like a fool. See, I'd been to a free yoga class the day before, and I figured that I must have pulled something while thinking that I was a lot fitter than I am in reality.

Namaste.

At the same time, the pain kept nagging at me and forced me to do things like leap up and scream when I bent in half to pick up something from the floor. Hmm. Doctor Google told me that pain on my right side could be my appendix, so I started to pay attention and noticed that my left side felt fine. Hmm. Then I had this voice in my head telling me that my mother listening to her body probably saved her life when she sought attention for what turned out to be a brain tumor. Hmm.

To summarize the rest of the day, the urgent care doctor had his staff register me at the local hospital, where a CT scan showed that I had appendicitis. By 5pm, my appendix was on its way out. Shortly thereafter, I spent my first night away from Madeleine. Would you know it - I got about 3 hours of sleep total. Who designs hospital rooms with a 24-hour flood light facing the bed? Who thinks that a patient can sleep through her blood pressure being monitored every half hour? I digress.

Not a bad view for a hospital room but not one I want to revisit.

Even though I only spent about 24 hours post-op in the hospital, I'd rather never have this view again.

While George wasn't busy entertaining, corralling, chasing, feeding, and generally caring for our beautiful but very busy 10-month old, he canceled the arrangements we'd had for the next two days in Sedona and Flagstaff and made arrangements for us to stay four more days in Phoenix. He's pretty much a superhero for all he's had to do this past week.

As part of those doctor-ordered recovery days in Phoenix, he and Madeleine did some swimming while I captured the moment on film. If there's a silver lining to this ordeal, it's that George and Madeleine got to build some really special memories while I was able to witness so many of them.

While George is the super hero of this story, Madeleine is super baby. She went where we took her, skipped and shorted naps where necessary, mostly slept overnight, and ate what we fed her. All the while, she brightened a lot of people's days with her contagious smile and sweet laugh and made us feel like good parents even though we were reading Brown Bear Brown Bear, Haiku Baby, and Very Hungry Caterpillar for the 8 millionth time.

We're longing to leave, too, Madeleine.

Where are we now? I am thrilled to tell you that we were able to fly home on Friday, and I'm not sure I've ever been so glad to be home. It's not just the bed and similar creature comforts, but I actually have some clothes that will fit my swollen belly (think of me, looking six months pregnant). If you could have seen Madeleine in her Jumperoo, you'd know that she's glad to be home, too.

The next month is going to be...interesting. I'm not supposed to lift more than 10 pounds for four weeks. More realistically, I'm trying to listen to my body (I'm pretty good at that) and stop when or before it tells me I've done too much (I'm not so good at that).

"Take me home, Alaska Airlines."

So, we didn't make it to the Grand Canyon or even out of Phoenix this trip. But, as I told George on our flight home, I guess this is life's way of reminding me that I can't plan everything.

Madeleine - Week 45

Apologies for such a delayed weekly photo. I assure you that the photo was taken on time, and the post has a good excuse for being delayed...but more on that later.

For now, enjoy a picture of our sweet Madeleine in all of her smiley glory.

Paint Chip Color Book

When I saw this color book, I had one of those "duh" moments. You know the type: the moment when you ask yourself why you didn't think of an idea that is so obvious. I knew that I just had to whip up one for Miss M. Although I'm currently working on a more complicated color book for her, I'm hoping this one will be a hit when I pull it out during some upcoming travel. 

This is really a very cheap, simple project. I picked up some paint chips at a big box store; although I felt some guilt, I shouldn't have because they have collected more than enough of my money over the years. After figuring out how I wanted to arrange the colors, I cut rectangles of clear Contact paper just larger than the chips. Then, I made sandwiches (Contact paper, paint chip, paint chip, Contact paper), smoothed out the Contact paper and sealed the edges with a fingernail, trimmed the edges of the Contact paper, and punched a hole in the corner with one of my favorite tools. The whole thing is held together with a double knotted piece of spare ribbon. This took less than an hour and was done while a certain little lady played at my feet. 

I opted to leave out neutrals like brown, black, white, and grey because I like that these colors form a sort of circular rainbow. Because of that effect, I went with a single ribbon in the corner rather than a traditional book layout. 

What have you made out of paint chips recently?

Divided Basket

In case you haven't seen it yet, this basket is taking the sewing blogging world by storm.

Noodlehead Divided Basket

After staring at this beauty on Pinterest for far longer than I'd like to admit, I finally ponied up $6.50 to purchase the pattern. Boy am I glad that I did! This is my first time following an actual pattern (surprised?), and it was a great introduction to the pattern world because Anna's instructions were extremely detailed, accurate, and thorough. 

The first basket I made turned out a little busier than I would have liked (and a lot busier than I think the  intended recipient would have liked). 

Front

In hind sight, I think I'd love this basket if I'd left off the front pocket because it breaks up the pretty stripe pattern a little too much for my liking. (Yep, that's Ikea Annbeth fabric again.)

Back

No worries. I've given it a good home holding some of Madeleine's blocks.

Undeterred by my poor design choices and armed with the experience of having made one basket, I set out to make another one for the intended recipient. I'm a lot happier with how it turned out. I especially love the dumb luck that allowed the chevron pattern to line up on each side of the divider. 

I'm already planning my next divided baskets, and I have my eye on some clothing patterns to try for Madeleine...maybe. What about you? What great patterns have you used lately?